Budget 2025 The Price of Liberal Failure

The Price of Liberal Failure: An Unaffordable Budget for an Unaffordable Canada

This is a budget built for Liberal elites, not for working-class Canadians.

Prime Minister Mark Carney and the Liberal government have finally tabled their budget, and it is not good news for families already struggling under the heavy weight of high taxes and inflation. The results of Liberal inflationary spending speak for themselves. Canadians are paying more for everything, from gas to groceries to housing, and getting less in return. 

Now, in what is the first budget in more than a year for the Liberals, Carney has committed the ultimate political sin as the budget can be encapsulated as overpromise and under deliver. We were promised fiscal restraint and a new direction by the Prime Minister but instead, this budget throws fuel on the inflationary fire with $90 billion in new spending and an estimated $78.3 billion deficit. In fact, Carney’s deficit is twice the size of Trudeau’s last budget – a budget which resulted in the resignation of his Finance Minister and ultimately the end of Trudeau’s reign.

How quickly after being re-elected on a campaign promise of fiscal discipline do the Liberals return to their free-spending ways. This budget is not fiscal discipline; it is reckless abandon. There is not a single affordability measure in this budget, nothing to lower grocery prices or reward the hard work of those trying to get by. 

In fact, it is an incredible feat of slight of hand. 

The Liberals campaigned on eliminating the consumer carbon tax – a tax they vehemently defended for almost a decade as Canadians struggled to heat, feed and house themselves. Anyone who opposed the carbon tax was a climate change denier. Who can forget the Liberal Health Minister chastising Canadians for taking a family summer vacation “while the planet burned.”

However, when the carbon tax was no longer politically palatable the Liberals were quick to cast it aside. 

Now we know why they so easily abandoned their signature climate policy. It is because they planned to maintain and increase the industrial carbon tax. A tax consumers do not see on their bills or receipts. In the budget the Liberals announced they will increase the industrial carbon tax which will increase the costs of food, housing, transportation and everything else Canadians rely on.

The Finance Minister’s attempt to spin this by balancing the operating budget by 2028-29 is a shell game. Remember what Trudeau said when he was elected; there would be three years of small deficits followed by balanced budgets. What Canadians received were Liberal budgets with massive deficits and soaring inflation. Now the total federal debt is ballooning, the fiscal anchors have been abandoned and the cost of servicing that debt is rising, now estimated at more than $55.6 billion this year.

To put this in perspective the cost just to service in the interest on the debt is more than the Liberals transfer to provinces and territories for health care. It is an additional $5,500 the Liberals have added to the credit card of every single Canadian family which will have to be paid back. 

The most glaring omission is a comprehensive plan to tackle the everyday affordability crisis. This budget is fixated on “generational capital investments”: $115 billion for infrastructure, $110 billion for “productivity,” $81 billion for defence, but offers very little in regards of details on how these dollars will be spent and there is no immediate relief for the average Canadian household.

The theme of this budget was supposed to be a reckoning with the global economy and making “generational investments.” What Canadians received was generational debt in a massive, unfocused spending spree punishing prudence and mortgages our children’s future.

I will give credit where it is due, however scarce it may be. The inclusion of a “productivity super-deduction” for businesses to write off capital investments faster is a small, sensible step of which Conservatives have long advocated. Similarly, the signal that the controversial Oil and Gas Emissions Cap “would no longer be required” if enhanced methane regulations and carbon capture are deployed is another small step, with strings attached.

Lets be clear: we need more than a signal on the cap; we need a complete, unequivocal cancellation of the cap, repealing anti-resource legislation like the no pipelines Bill C-69  and the shipping ban C-48 to restore investment confidence in our most vital industry. The ‘Super-Deduction’ is a band-aid on the fiscal wound inflicted by years of Liberal anti-business and anti-resource policy.

The measure of any budget is not just how much it spends; it’s how wisely our tax dollars are spent and whether it delivers on priorities established by Canadians. As Conservatives, we stand for responsible government. We believe government can and must do more to ease the burden on Canadians today, while laying the foundation for a prosperous tomorrow. However, we cannot achieve that goal by mortgaging the future. We need an affordable budget for an affordable Canada. 

Leadership is putting the financial wellbeing of Canadian families and the success of Canadian entrepreneurs and industry ahead of political survival. 

In that respect, with generational debt, the Carney budget has failed Canadians.